guiding politics and commerce, and the daily concerns of life, on moral principles less pure, and lofty, and self-denying, than those of the New Testament. Another is the extraordinary multiplication of works of fiction, and the exciting and merely amusing character of modern literature, and the unmitigated nonsense of a great part of it; which is, I am sorry to see, frequently preferred to the productions of real genius, even though the latter assume the popular dress. Against fiction itself, as a form in which imagination embodies its conceptions, and by which the greatest teachers have conveyed to us the most important truths, it would be monstrous to raise objections. But in our age prose fiction has almost displaced poetry, because, I suppose, it attracts the mass of readers, without requiring from them any mental effort. Now, minds which are fed exclusively even on first-rate novels, much more those which waste time upon such as are simply worthless, must become so weakened and unaccustomed to patient thought, so habituated to excitement and diversion, as to be scarcely capable of reflecting on such lofty subjects as Christianity presents to them. No one can appropriate it, and make it a part of his own consciousness; or appreciate its deep spirituality, its pure morality, its penetrating wisdom, unless he is prepared to apply to the task the best efforts both of mind and spirit. For the Gospel cannot be received with lazy acquies

cence (the practical effects of which scarcely differ from those of neglect and infidelity), it must be the object of hearty belief and living interest. Thus a true Christian must be a man of vigorous mind and earnest purpose, who, believing that temptation is everywhere around him, and within him, that heaven and hell are before him, and that God is above him, desires to understand his Father's will, and to appreciate the length and breadth and depth and height of Christ's salvation. Here then is the second reason for which expositions of Scripture seem especially desirable in our own time, as helping men to think about religion. For hearers and readers will be reminded by them that the medium, through which God has been pleased to make known His will, is a collection of writings of various ages, containing many intellectual difficulties. The study of these difficulties will invigorate the minds which a trifling and ephemeral literature can only enfeeble, and thus the Bible will be at once the instrument of imparting divine truth, and of so strengthening our faculties, that we may duly receive it and appreciate its greatness. Indeed I fully believe that, if a man can once be brought to regard Scripture as a subject for real study, to investigate its history, its biographies, its poetry, its antiquities, which all bear on the interpretation and comprehension of its spiritual teaching, he will find himself engaged in a pursuit which, as a matter of

merely human interest, is most attractive, varied, and even fascinating, and will thus be led to reverence more deeply the superhuman wisdom which has thrown it into a form absolutely unique among books professing to contain a revelation, and has thus stamped it, from the beginning to the end, with the living traces of divine authority'. And that spirit of en

1 "The peculiarity of both the Hebrew and of the Christian Scriptures is, that they are not confined to one place or time or person. They abound in incidents so varied, as to give to the whole book that searching application to every condition and character of life which has been a principal source of its endless edification. The differences between the several prophets and historians of the Old Testament, between the several Evangelists and Apostles of the New Testament, are full of meaning. On the face of each book we see what each book was intended to be and to teach......The Bible is in this way not only its own interpreter, but its own guide. The styles of Scripture are so many heaven planted sign-posts to set our feet in the right direction. There is no other book which, within so short a compass, contains such 'many coloured (TOλUTolklλos) wisdom,' such a variety of minds, characters, and situations......Whilst the Koran (with a very few exceptions) notices no phenomena except those of the desert, no form of society except Arabian life, the Bible includes topics which come home to almost every condition of life, and almost every climate. The sea, the mountains, the town, the civilized, the republican, the regal state; can all find their expression in its words. Women emerge from their Oriental seclusion, and foreshadow the destinies of their sex in European Christendom. And not only so, but Egypt, Chaldæa, Persia, Greece, Rome, all come into contact with its gradual formation; so that alone of sacred books, it avowedly includes the words and thoughts of other religions than its own; alone of Oriental books, it has an affinity with the North and the West; alone almost of religious books, its story is constantly traversing the haunts of men and cities. The Koran 'stays at home.' The Bible is the book of the world, the companion of every

quiry, knowledge, and rational conviction, which is encouraged by the very form of the Bible, is distinctly commended in some of its holiest precepts, and especially by Him to whom it all testifies; for He declared in the most solemn of all His discourses that life eternal consists in the knowledge "of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.” In one of the wise aphorisms which a philosopher of this century has collected for us as aids to religious reflection, we read that hereafter perhaps "all other faculties may be swallowed up in love, or superseded by immediate vision; but it is on the wings of the Cherubim, i. e. according to the interpretation of the Hebrew doctors, the intellectual powers and energies, that we must be first borne up to the pure empyrean; it must be Seraphs and not the hearts of imperfect mortals which can burn unfuelled and unfed. Give me understanding, is the prayer of the royal psalmist, and I shall observe Thy law with my whole heart. Thy law is exceeding broad, that is, comprehensive, pregnant, containing far more than the apparent import of the words on a first perusal. It is my meditation all the day'." It would indeed be a fatal error to infer

traveller; read even, when not believed, necessary when unwelcome." Stanley's Eastern Church, p. 270. Some excellent remarks, having the same general tendency, will be found in Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, a book strongly to be recommended to those who desire to study the Bible in an intelligent and reverential spirit.

1 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Aphorism xv.

from these truths that Christianity belongs chiefly to the domain of the intellect, that it should be classed with the philosophies of this world, or is intended only for scholars and men of high education. Such would be a singularly mistaken view of a religion, which includes all men of all ranks and outward advantages in the one category of sinners, and so humbles all alike before the throne of God. Its true character is freely acknowledged by the most active intellects which have sought in Christian faith the satisfaction of cravings far deeper than any intellectual wants. It was the most gifted of Christ's apostles, who came not with excellency of speech or of man's wisdom, declaring unto us the testimony of God, and who contrasts the knowledge which puffeth up with the charity which edifieth. Tertullian has rightly maintained that the simplest Christian, if indeed a Christian, knows more than the most accomplished irreligious philosopher. It was not through the love of philosophical speculation that Augustine became a Christian, but rather through weariness of it, when he said, Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptores, multa sunt acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sed in iis omnibus hoc non invenio, "Venite ad me, qui laboratis." If Arnold', in those latest meditations of his, which have such a striking though unconscious reference to his approaching rest from 1 Life, Vol. II. p. 274.